Sunday 3 May 2009
Thursday 23 April 2009
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Sunday 19 April 2009
Britain’s personality clusters
The Sunday Times today reported that 'The nation is polarising with like-minded people gravitating to Identity live in the same areas'. Can this be true?
While I did find this article very interesting I do think that it failed to cover some obvious practical factors that determine where people live. The article reports that Londoners show creativity, intellect, open-mindedness and extroversion but not friendliness. Well yes I can understand how that happens. People in London have higher living expenses which would mean that in order to have a good standard of living they have to be creative and hardworking and deal with lots of people. I think that it is not always that people move to places because of their personality but more that their personalities must adapt to their environment. This would also be true of people who move to the countryside. In the countryside you would probably have less actual need to be creative, outgoing, ect and so even though people in the countryside may want to go to a 24 hour cafe and go to the gym at 4AM, its just not going to be possible and so perhaps because of that they are incorrectly seen as being 'less outgoing'.
While I did find this article very interesting I do think that it failed to cover some obvious practical factors that determine where people live. The article reports that Londoners show creativity, intellect, open-mindedness and extroversion but not friendliness. Well yes I can understand how that happens. People in London have higher living expenses which would mean that in order to have a good standard of living they have to be creative and hardworking and deal with lots of people. I think that it is not always that people move to places because of their personality but more that their personalities must adapt to their environment. This would also be true of people who move to the countryside. In the countryside you would probably have less actual need to be creative, outgoing, ect and so even though people in the countryside may want to go to a 24 hour cafe and go to the gym at 4AM, its just not going to be possible and so perhaps because of that they are incorrectly seen as being 'less outgoing'.
Sunday 1 March 2009
Baroness Complete Twitter
I have just read the following piece in the Observer:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/01/twitter-facebook-social-network-regulation
The piece was about this weeks announcement by leading neuroscientist and "people's peer" Baroness Susan Greenfield. Baroness Greenfield has declared that social networking websites are bad for your health. More on The Baroness can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Greenfield
What a joke! When I first saw the comments this week, my first reaction was to laugh that anyone could take this seriously. The Baroness is the kind of Luddite that would in the 1800s have complained that libraries were dangerous because they contained too much information in one place. The sad and worrying thing is that as a top scientist and 'peoples peer' she is a spokesperson for British Science.
Another news piece that I saw this week was on CBS News from the US showing members of the Republican party furiously using Twitter on their Blackberries trying to reconnect with the American people. If there is anything that could destroy the cool-factor of Twitter faster than getting a tweet from John McCain I would like to know what it is. However it does seem that the GOP have realised too late that the public now see through the rubbish that comes out on Fox News 24/7 and they want to connect directly with political leaders in a way that they have never been able to before. People are just not interested in stage-managed, heavily spun news show who are speaking for a particular political agenda. There is a whole new generation that can use the Internet to find the truth behind any story or at least to get a much larger consensus of opinion on something within seconds. Barack Obama won the election by connecting in a more personal and less corporate way
The good Baroness Greenfield should realise that there is no way back from where we are. We are not going to go back in time, destroy all modern technologies and inventions and go back to cave-dwelling. Surly there must be tremendous benefits in educational terms in the amount of reading and writing that younger people do on mediums like Twitter. They would gain more Languages and exposure to different cultures, opinions and evolve in a way that would just not have been possible in the past without racking up 10000s of airmiles. Why would we want to go back in time to where younger people spent hours in front of TV screens showing broadcasts from their local station, with no interaction, wide-ranging debate, conversation or community? Is this what the Baroness Advocates? If this were the case and Britain was to put some kind of block on these activities I am sure we would simply become less technology savvy, less creative and less educated people. Technologies like Twitter are here to stay much like the Cell Phone or email it is a communications tool that people find convenient and helps them to communicate with people globally and instantly. There is nothing inherently wrong in it. It is just like writing lots of short letters to people you know and don't know without buying stamps. Its great! If the Baroness thinks that her comments will have any weight in reducing the time people spend using tools such as Twitter she should also think again. I am sure that a vast amount of people had not even heard of Twitter before this week. Also preaching to 'young people' from an Ivory Tower in Westminster about what they shouldn’t be doing is not going to stop this group, it will encourage them.
If you don’t know how Twitter works, here is one from some kid in Chicago, who does Twitter a bit: http://twitter.com/BarackObama
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/01/twitter-facebook-social-network-regulation
The piece was about this weeks announcement by leading neuroscientist and "people's peer" Baroness Susan Greenfield. Baroness Greenfield has declared that social networking websites are bad for your health. More on The Baroness can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Greenfield
What a joke! When I first saw the comments this week, my first reaction was to laugh that anyone could take this seriously. The Baroness is the kind of Luddite that would in the 1800s have complained that libraries were dangerous because they contained too much information in one place. The sad and worrying thing is that as a top scientist and 'peoples peer' she is a spokesperson for British Science.
Another news piece that I saw this week was on CBS News from the US showing members of the Republican party furiously using Twitter on their Blackberries trying to reconnect with the American people. If there is anything that could destroy the cool-factor of Twitter faster than getting a tweet from John McCain I would like to know what it is. However it does seem that the GOP have realised too late that the public now see through the rubbish that comes out on Fox News 24/7 and they want to connect directly with political leaders in a way that they have never been able to before. People are just not interested in stage-managed, heavily spun news show who are speaking for a particular political agenda. There is a whole new generation that can use the Internet to find the truth behind any story or at least to get a much larger consensus of opinion on something within seconds. Barack Obama won the election by connecting in a more personal and less corporate way
The good Baroness Greenfield should realise that there is no way back from where we are. We are not going to go back in time, destroy all modern technologies and inventions and go back to cave-dwelling. Surly there must be tremendous benefits in educational terms in the amount of reading and writing that younger people do on mediums like Twitter. They would gain more Languages and exposure to different cultures, opinions and evolve in a way that would just not have been possible in the past without racking up 10000s of airmiles. Why would we want to go back in time to where younger people spent hours in front of TV screens showing broadcasts from their local station, with no interaction, wide-ranging debate, conversation or community? Is this what the Baroness Advocates? If this were the case and Britain was to put some kind of block on these activities I am sure we would simply become less technology savvy, less creative and less educated people. Technologies like Twitter are here to stay much like the Cell Phone or email it is a communications tool that people find convenient and helps them to communicate with people globally and instantly. There is nothing inherently wrong in it. It is just like writing lots of short letters to people you know and don't know without buying stamps. Its great! If the Baroness thinks that her comments will have any weight in reducing the time people spend using tools such as Twitter she should also think again. I am sure that a vast amount of people had not even heard of Twitter before this week. Also preaching to 'young people' from an Ivory Tower in Westminster about what they shouldn’t be doing is not going to stop this group, it will encourage them.
If you don’t know how Twitter works, here is one from some kid in Chicago, who does Twitter a bit: http://twitter.com/BarackObama
Sunday 8 February 2009
Tuesday 20 January 2009
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